Financial principles from the parable of talents

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money." After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.' "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' "The man with the two talents also came. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.' "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' "Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathered where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.' "His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. 'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' (Matt 25:14-30 New International Version)

Back then in Sunday school when we were taught this story, the teacher talked about every other thing that the talents could connote, our natural abilities and gifting, our privileges and relationships, everything except what the scripture was talking about; money. Probably because at that time it still felt ‘unholy’ to talk too much about money in the church. Jesus did not/does not feel that way as He was reported to have taught a lot about money and here within this story, he communicated many auspicious lessons for financial success. Among many other things, it is important to first of all point out that we do not own the things we have. We are stewards of them, saddled with the responsibility of managing them effectively in light of making a profit which can be measured in terms of increase or how much impact we make with the resources. Having established that, we can move along to other lessons. Allow me to use money instead of talents (the Passion and Message translations of the bible use a thousand gold coins and a thousand dollars respectively per talent). Notice how the master distributes the money, according to each servant’s ability. What ability? Their ability to multiply, to create value out of what was given to them. The term ‘currency’ is of Latin origin, from the word ‘currrens’ which means a condition of flowing. Thus, it can be said that money flows. It flows towards people according to their abilities. Away from those who do nothing else but spend it and towards those who have developed the skill of multiplying it.
Like anything else, money can be studied and understood and the skills to multiply it or have more flow towards you can be mastered. Think about it, if there was a common source of water where everyone draws from and you needed more in your house, what would you do? Tell you what I will do. I would increase the diameter of my pipe or get more pipes to channel more water to me. It works the same way with money. We all want more money, but it does not happen by wishing. Otherwise, we would all be billionaires by now, wouldn’t we? So, what money pipes can we lay hands on. Developing skills that are in high demand, creating businesses to meet needs, reaching for the tops in our careers, all these increase our abilities to earn more or in my other words, they cause some more currents to flow towards you. Next, we would be looking at investments. Notice that the master came back after a long time and by then two of the servants had made twice what they were given. We do not know for sure how long the master spent being away, nor am I advocating that investments take forever to mature. However, a principle can be drawn from here, which is that the process of wealth creation is a long, probably life-long one that requires patience and some deliberate calculations and permutations. Many of us have a ‘hit and run’ mindset concerning money. We want to make it fast and so we look for the quickest means, even when they don’t make any sense. Truth be told, you can make some quick bucks this way but wealth can never be built in such a manner. We have to carve out our wealth creation path. Presently, a lot of investment platforms exist. From the relatively stable ones like agriculture, real estate, stocks, to the more volatile ones like foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, etcetera. The responsibility is then to get knowledge in as many areas as we can and move forward to start investing in them. We could also create our own business for others to invest in. I must say that the pitfalls of the third servant are our danger signs on the path of making investments. Firstly, we see that the servant does nothing with the money he was given except burying it, something similar to what we conventionally know as saving. Wait a minute, are you saying that saving is bad? No, I am not! And before you log out on me, allow me to explain. Agreed, saving is very fundamental in the process of wealth creation. In short, until you learn to save, you are unlikely to make any other progress financially. So say the financial experts. And this is quite logical, because saving provides seed money for investments, starting up a business and whatever else we would want to do to create wealth. Thus, I have no problem with saving. The problem with the kind of saving that was done by this servant is that it was born out of fear. He was not saving for investment or for starting up a business. He was not even interested in making any profit, otherwise, he would have sought out a low-risk investment and put the money there at least. This servant was trying so hard to be careful with his money and as a result, he missed out on opportunities for multiplication. Something else, many times too, a lot of us save only for subsequent spending. We save to buy this or that. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that but if that’s all we do with our money, then our financial future can’t be very bright. So there you have it, a tale of two kinds of people, the financially smart and the not-so-smart. Just remember that for each of us, a master is coming. The master of our retirement years, a time when we can no longer do any active work and all we’ll be left with financially are the businesses and investments we made in our youth. Yeah, I could say it is never too late to start but none of us has till forever, so we have to start now and start fast!

In summary, increase your ability to earn by investing in yourself. Next think long term and learn how to invest. Invest in ability, this way your capital is secured. Lastly, saving alone does not make anyone rich. Save to invest and not to spend.

Thank you for reading